Red
by idioticonion
Summary: AU - Robin stumbles on something amongst Barney's fancy dress costumes. Spoilers for The Possimpible and Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog
1. Red

Red.

"Hey, what's this?" Robin said, shoving a plastic-draped hanger into his arms. She was searching through his costume clothes rack for something "less slutty" to wear for her resume video.

Barney looked down at the article of clothing in his hands, a long, red, heavy-cotton coat with large white ceramic buttons on the shoulder and he huffed a deep breath, ready with an explanation. But Robin had already moved on - she was currently engrossed in his kung-fu uniform, already pulling off the protective plastic covering.

How quickly they forget.

He turned around with a sigh. If she's have found a Superman costume in there, or a Spiderman costume, she wouldn't have to ask him "what's this?".

And it wasn't as though he'd tried to hide his past. It wasn't as though he'd ever deny it if he were asked outright. It was just… it all seemed so far away now. He'd not been back to LA in years, and any ELE business he took part in could be carried out over the internet.

You didn't need to appear in person any more to commit evil. Hence his red coat going into cold storage. He didn't even know what he'd done with his protective goggles and gloves.

"Hey, I like this!" Robin said, pulling the white robe over her head.

"Of course you do!" He said with an exasperated sigh. "It's the most kick-ass and least sexy thing I own. It's perfect for you. If you wanna clean up trash for the rest of your life, Jesus! Aren't you having a hard enough time trying to get a job, without deliberately trying to sabotage your chances?"

The world was a mess.

When chicks like Scherbatsky couldn't even get a break, the world was on its last legs. Ready for the farm.

She gave him a stern look, hands on her hips.

"Okay okay," He conceded. "We'll do it your way."

Far be it for him to try and force her to do anything she didn't want to do. The woman was as stubborn as Bad Horse had been.

Ach, he missed Bad Horse. Almost as much as he missed death-rays.

*--*--*

"Seriously!" Robin said, when she saw his editing equipment. "What do you do?"

He chuckled under his breath and gave his obligatory answer. "Please!" It's not as if he wouldn't tell her if she asked the right question. Like "Are you, or have you ever been a member of the Evil League of Evil"?

It's not as if it was his fault he had to get out of LA, that the place just got way too hot for him after the fifth assassination attempt. Superheroes he could deal with. Aspiring villains attempting to join the ELE through the traditional career route of "dead men's shoes" was another matter.

It's not as if he wanted to impress her.

After Shannon and, latterly, Penny, Barney had turned his life around as far as women were concerned. When the ELE sent him away, he'd chosen to return to New York, his Mom, and set up a new life.

It's not as if anyone ever recognised him. He'd always thought the thing with Superman and Clark Kent was utterly ridiculous until he'd experienced it himself. Seriously! How hard was it to realise he was Doctor Horrible without the goggles and labcoat? Even at the height of his fame (infamy?) he could happily walk around Echo Park in broad daylight and no one would bat an eyelid. He might as well have been invisible.

Barney let Robin loose with her resume footage while he took the red coat off its hanger, unbuttoned it, and felt the rough material under his fingers. It smelled musty, felt stiff from years of dry cleaning. He remembered a time when all his coats were soft, almost worn thin from cheap detergent and too-hot laundry tubs.

He hadn't been to a laundry mat for five years.

Barney took off his jacket and shirt, slipping on a tshirt and pulling the red coat over his arms and shoulders. It felt… big. Maybe his body shape had changed? Maybe he'd just gotten way too used to fitted Italian tailoring.

Robin turned around to stare at him as he buttoned the lab coat up to the neck.

"Well?" He said.

She looked at him with something almost approaching recognition. For a minute his heartbeat skipped with excitement. Then she said:

"You know, Ted's got a pair of cowboy boots that would go perfectly with that!"

He threw his shirt at her.


	2. Yellow

Yellow

"The surviving members of the Evil League Of Evil wouldn't last five minutes in New York," Ted declaimed and Marshall nodded eagerly.

Barney slid back into the booth next to Robin, slammed the pitcher of beer he was carrying down on the table and almost drenched Robin in the foamy, amber liquid.

"Jeez, Barney, be careful would ya?" She yelled at him, but his clumsiness didn't seem to phase Ted, who kept right on talking.

"Not that it'd be easy for any costumed Supervillain to walk down the street. Unless it was in the East Village, right?" He held up his hand for a high five and Marshall slapped it.

Both Robin and Lily had lost interest in the boy-talk long ago. "So… Patriot's game," Robin said to Barney, in an effort to engage him in some kind of conversation that didn't involve Superheroes.

"Huh?" Barney replied, twitching a little.

"The game? Patriots v Chiefs? You win much?" Robin asked him, elbowing him. He flinched away.

"So who was your favorite?" Ted asked Marshall, before filling his glass from the pitcher.

"Out of the whole LA super heroes?" Marshall laughed. "Probably Elemental Gale!" He grinned at Lily, who suddenly switched her attention back to their conversation.

"Oh come on baby, she's a slut!" Lily said with a threatening smile.

Marshall grinned and giggled.

Inside, Barney snorted. He'd met Gale many times. She was a screamer and really, extraordinarily annoying. And she made him lose his goggles once. "I mean, wind!" He muttered under his breath. "What kind of super power is that?"

Robin elbowed him in the ribs while Ted sighed deeply. "Of course, there was no-one to match-"

Barney squeezed his eyes closed and thought: "Please don't say Captain Hammer… Please don't say Captain Hammer…"

"Thunder Paw!" Ted announced loudly. Barney almost choked on his beer.

"Ooo, Thunder Paw!" Lily clapped her hands. "I remember him. So cute!"

"What in the hell are you guys talking about?" Robin asked, giving Barney a look as if to say "And don't you dare join in with this madness! These two are bad enough."

"Los Angeles had an outbreak of Superheroes a few years ago," Barney explained to her. "It was quite the craze."

Ted snorted. "Outbreak? Only you could describe something as awesome as the Guild of Heroes!" He said the words with a far-away look in his eyes. "Of course, we didn't know you back then but, of course…"

Marshall took over, "You'd have been rooting for the Villains!"

Robin waved her hands at them. "Stop! Stop! You're talking about actual Superheroes? In LA?"

Ted nodded. Barney just sat there, feeling like someone had pumped ice-cold water into his veins.

"Superheroes with super powers?" Robin prompted him. "Seriously!"

"Robin, how have you never heard of this? Where were you, under a rock? I mean, Canada and everything but they still have news there. Presumably you even reported on it?"

Even Lily nodded. "It was pretty big news."

Robin looked at Barney desperately for support. "Dude, come on?" She said.

Marshall grinned. "So who did you root for, buddy?" He asked Barney, who shifted uncomfortably under their scrutiny. "Who was your favorite?"

"Ooo! Ooo! I know!" Lily piped up. "Professor Normal! He's basically the Terminator! And we all know how much Barney loves that metal dude."

"Wow," Marshall said. "Professor Normal's still going? Whoa!"

"Who in the hell is Professor Normal? Sounds like a loser to me!" Robin laughed at them.

"He's a cyborg," Barney explained to her, keeping his voice low. But he was cut off by Ted.

"No! Barney would totally be into Dead Bowie. He's got that power of mesmerisation!"

"Okay!" Robin said, raising her voice and holding up her hands. "Firstly… Dead Bowie? Dead Bowie, seriously? And secondly… mesmerisation isn't even a word, Ted!"

This derailed the conversation quite happily for the next five minutes until Marshall (the annoyingly big-brained freak) remembered that Barney hadn't answered the question about Superheroes. Or villains!

"So come on dude, which one was your favorite."

Barney snorted. "I would never be that lame as to have a favorite Superhero."

"Oh come on man, play the game. Pick one now."

Barney shrugged. "Marshall, it's like Ted said, they all retired years ago, it's old news. Bo-ring"

Marshall gave him a look. "They're not retired. They're just cowards."

"What?" Barney said, his voice dangerously soft.

Ted laughed. "Totally. What was it Wingspan used to say - 'bunch of yellow bellies'."

Barney sat up in his chair, tensing. He couldn't help himself. This brought back too many memories - of him and Bowie stuck in the Heroes Guild fortress, surrounded by the goons and being told they were nothing - insignificant against the supposed forces of good.

He wanted to throw up.

He clenched his jaw against the sensation.

"Yellow bellies!" Ted repeated, laughing hard and slapping his hand on the table. He pointed at Barney. "Look, you've offended him. Told you Barney would totally sympathize with the bad guys!"

Barney narrowed his eyes, his hands balling into fists below the table.

"Don't worry Bro," Marshall said. "It's not like they can hear us. It's not like they've got the place bugged…" He trailed off uncertainty. He looked around dramatically and Lily clutched at his arm. "Oh man! You don't think they've got the place bugged do you?" He squeaked.

"Marshall, for god's sake!" Robin sputtered, still shaking her head incredulously.

"Dude, it's not like you've got anything to be scared of. I mean, Bad Horse is dead, no one's heard anything from the Evil League of Evil-"

Robin snorted and Ted gave her a quelling look.

"-nobody's heard anything from the ELE in years. I mean, the worst they could do to you is try and hit you with incendiary rice or… bore you to death with laws and statutes from the eighteenth century."

"Come on - what about the flesh-eating ray that Doctor Horrible used to-"

That was it - it was like someone had lit a spark under Barney and he could feel the fuse burning all the way down to the tiny detonator that was his heart. He surged to his feet and stormed out. He couldn't stand it any more. Not one more second.

He didn't even hear the concerned cries of his friends through the roaring in his ears.

*--*--*

"I thought you guys were talking about a film or something!" Robin's voice could be heard just outside the apartment door, before Ted got his key in the lock and opened it. "I mean, Superheroes? Who'd believe that?"

And then Lily screamed.

Sitting on Ted's sofa, managing to look spectacularly menacing for a guy in a costume, was Doctor Horrible.

His head turned slowly towards them, the goggles reflecting the light in the room, masking his eyes, giving him the cold-dead look of a shark. Pitiless. Pure evil. The most feared member of the Evil League of Evil was sitting right in their living room. And worse than that, he was holding some kind of ray gun.

Lily clutched Marshall's side and her husband blurted. "You see! I told you they had listening devices in MacLaren's! And none of you believed me!"

The four of them were frozen in place in the doorway and, after a moment, Robin tried to fight her way to the front. She took one look at the figure sitting on the couch and rolled her eyes.

"Jeez guys, it's only Barney in a red coat. You're all being ridiculous."

She stumbled against Lily's outstretched hand, then walked casually into the kitchen, shouting over her shoulder, "That's a good one, Barney! You want a beer?"

Incredibly, Dr Horrible got up off their sofa and followed Robin into the kitchen, taking the bottle from her and holding it in one black-gloved hand.

Ted, Lily and Marshall inched forward into the room. Ted shook his head, eyes still wide with fear. "Marshall, tell me that Dr Horrible isn't standing in our kitchen drinking beer with Robin?"

Marshall's voice definitely seemed to have shifted up an octave. "Would if I could, man!"

Robin was smirking and talking quite happily to the man standing next to her in the kitchen. The ray gun was lying forgotten on their counter.

"Robin!" Lily said, warningly.

"Guys!" Robin laughed, "Seriously, you Americans are so damn credulous."

Then Dr Horrible pulled his goggles away from his eyes, pushing them up to his forehead.

Ted later described what he saw as having the same effect of one of those weird 3-D posters you used to get in the 80s, where you had to squint and go cross-eyed to see a cube or a dinosaur or a pyramid or something.

It was Dr Horrible. It was definitely Dr Horrible. They'd all seen his face a thousand times on TV and on magazine covers. And he had the goggles, the coat with its trademark embroidered caduceus, He had the hostile stare and unforgiving eyes.

He had some kind of ray gun.

Definitely Dr Horrible.

But it was also, if you squinted and went kind of cross-eyed, definitely Barney.

"What the fu-" Lily blurted, and Marshall clamped his hand over her mouth.

"I'm not a coward," Barney said, softly. Robin gave him an odd look.

Ted was a little more on the ball than the others. "So… Barney.... this is what you do?" He said with an awed expression.

Barney shrugged. "I guess that we don't need costumes any more," he said. "But I'm not a coward. None of us are."

"Us?" Ted asked him. "As in the Evil League of Evil?"

Barney nodded.

"This is really stupid, guys!" Robin protested. "You're all being ridiculous. Barney! You work for a Bank! Marshall, tell him!"

Finally Lily and Marshall got up the nerve to approach Barney, reaching out and touching his coat tentatively like he was some kind of animal who might turn around and give them a nasty bite.

"Wow," Marshall said.

"The coat looks good on you!" Lily smiled up at him.

"Wow," Marshall repeated.

"Guys! It's just a costume!" Robin said, clearly exasperated.

Barney gave her a look, picked up the ray gun and aimed it across the room at Ted's replica English Phone Booth.

He fired.

Robin's eyes went very wide. "Holy shit," was all she could say.

"Hey!" Ted said. "You're paying for that, man!"

Barney turned sharply towards him and glared. Ted backed away a step, hands held up in front of him. "I mean, you know…"

"Just don't kill us!" Marshall pleaded.

Barney sighed and ripped the goggles from the top of his head, putting the gun down. "Guys, I'm not going to kill you."

"But you kill people all time!" Lily said. "And hey! Barney, that's so not cool. Does your Mom know?"

Barney grinned weakly. "What would be the point of a secret identity if everyone knew. Duh!"

Robin was still shaking her head, a little goggle-eyed. "You're a super villain? Barney, why does that not surprise me?"

"And you're trusting us with this?" Ted asked him.

Barney shrugged. "Guys, just try and tell someone. It'll be fun to watch you. No-one's going to believe you."

His four friends exchanged a look.

Barney left them in the kitchen and walked back into the living room, stripping off his black gauntlet-gloves and unbuttoning his red lab coat.

"That's possibly the weirdest, most awesome thing I've ever seen…" Marshall said under his breath.

"Weirder and more awesome than Nessie?" Lily asked him. He looked thoughtful, then nodded.

"Never got to be friends with Nessie."

"You think we're still friends with him?" Lily asked him, under her breath.

Ted patted her on the back, encouraging her out of the kitchen. "Let's go and see, shall we?"

Robin stayed in the kitchen for a moment before grabbing some more beers from the fridge. When she finally appeared in the living room she sat confidently down next to Barney, who was now dressed in black jeans, a black tee and outsized boots. She grinned and squeezed up tight next to him.

"So…" she said, reaching down to pinch his knee. "Super villain, eh?" She winked at him. "Hot!"

And for some weird reason, that broke the ice.


	3. Purple

**Purple**

Superheroes come in primary colors. Traditionally, they dressed in royal blue, blood red, canary yellow and vibrant green. They wanted to stand out, on the pages of comic books, on the streets. Captain Hammer's logo was yellow, of course. But hey, Batman dressed in black.

Barney wore charcoal suits and purple shirts and thin, burned-orange ties. Sometimes he wore nut-brown suits with Windsor-knotted ties, sometimes no tie at all. He often wondered if super-villains were supposed to dress in the secondary color pallet. He wondered if a suit was a kind of costume.

Being a retired super-villain came at a price - intense boredom. Oh, there was the occasional request from the E.L.E. But mostly Barney was left to himself, left to find something, anything, to occupy his not-inconsiderable mind. He found ways - invented feuds with the guy in the office in the skyscraper opposite his building, suggested imaginary building projects, created conference calls that were actually drinking sessions with his buddies.

Barney drank. A lot.

It was one of the things that numbed him, forced him to slow down a little, took his mind of the stream of diabolical inventions that marched across his cortex every day.

The one good thing about New York (one of the many good things) was that Barney wasn't reminded very often of his past. New Yorkers were a cynical bunch, less prone to celebrity worship than the drones that inhabited Dr Horrible's old stomping ground of Los Angeles. Super-villains were disappearing back into the shadows, into the background where they belonged. Their star was waning. Barney fully expected not to hear from E.L.E. for at least another year.

That's why it was such a surprise when Howard Wolowicz turned up at the GNB building and asked to see him.

*--*--*

A lot had happened in the four years since he'd last seen Moist - sorry, Howard. Barney still had trouble using his real name. At the height of Dr Horrible's reign of terror, he had once asked Moist if there was something he could give him. A present, one thing to reward his most highly valued, most trusted henchman.

Moist had looked at him sadly and said just one word. "Freedom."

At the time, Barney hadn't understood. He'd thought, in the way he usually did, that Moist was talking about his "little problem" - his useless superpower. Of course, Dr Horrible had got right on the it, devising a device that would balance Moist's... moisture... to the correct (i.e. normal) levels.

No more laminating everything, Dr Horrible had told his best friend. No more slipping and falling all the time. You'll even be able to snap your fingers again, he told him.

Moist hadn't looked that excited. He didn't seem to be suitably grateful for the incredible gift that he was about to be given.  
"Doc?" Moist asked him hesitantly, as he was being hooked up to the machine. "Are you sure this is gonna work?"

The bad Doctor was attaching a set of electrodes and wires to his own body. "Of course!" He'd beamed. "I'm using myself as a template. You should be as dry as I am in about... thirty seconds!"

Amazingly, the device had worked first time. It had dried out Moist permanently and with incredible efficiency.

However, it has also done a good deal more to the poor guy. It had transferred some of Barney's own self into his friend.

*--*--*

Moist- sorry, Howard- was hitting on a secretary when Barney came to meet him. "Wow," was all he could say. Howard was dressed like... well, someone from The Monkees or something, in painfully tight purple jeans, a bright green slogan t-shirt and a belt buckle so large and shiny that you could have used it as a satellite dish.

Barney was pretty sure that Moist's new dress sense hadn't come from whatever part of his own personality had been accidentally transplanted into his ex-henchman.

"Hey M- Howard!" He said, reluctantly sticking out his hand, only to find it clasped by cool, dry fingers. It was disconcerting. Old habits were hard to shake, he supposed.

"Hey Doc!" Moist said, brightly, brazenly.

"How's, er, Caltech?" Barney asked him.

Where else was a transplanted engineering genius going to work, once he'd retired from the Henchmen's Union? Of course, Dr Horrible had faked his qualifications (Masters degree at MIT etc) and got him a job that he could really enjoy. But it was just too creepy to watch Moist walking around with some of Dr Horrible's smarts.

With a _lot_ of Dr Horrible's smarts.

And also, a lot of Dr Horrible's lecherous nature.

As Moist, Howard hadn't had a great deal of luck with the ladies. But once he's been freeze-dried, the guy couldn't get enough of his new-found ability to... well... pursue the fairer sex without fear of damp patches. At least not unintentional damp patches. Barney flashed him a grin. Howard Wolowicz didn't see to have that much more luck with the ladies than Moist had. But, bless him, he was trying real hard.

"It's good," Howard said, winking at the secretary, who was studiously ignoring him. "Lots of hot chicks - like you wouldn't believe, man. And I'm working on the ISS. That's the International Space Station. "

"Sounds awesome," Barney said, smoothly guiding Howard towards the elevator. "It's... good to see you." As soon as the doors closed behind them he said "So, Time Science Blood Cloud helping you out on that one?"

Howard grinned a sly grin and tapped his nose. "That's on a need to know basis, Doc."

"And I don't need to know?" Barney raised an eyebrow and took a breath. "Why are you here Moist?"

Howard narrowed his eyes. "Now, is that the way to greet an old friend. Let's do lunch and we'll rap?"

Barney shook his head. "I have plans. Meeting with Scherbatsky."

Howard shrugged. "Bring him along. Or don't your new... friends know about your dirty past?"

Barney smirked. "Robin's a she. And yeah, she knows!"

But Howard barely seemed to hear him. "Oh really?" He smiled, showing his teeth. "She hot?"

"Like you wouldn't believe," Barney laughed, as they made their way to his office.

*--*--*

Barney blinked and looked into the mirror, massaging the bags under his eyes. His tan was fading. He had a lot more lines than he'd had four years ago. He looked a wreck.

Still, at least he wasn't beat up.

Dr Horrible used to get beat up, a lot.

Many was the time when he'd come back home (how was a secret lab, always a secret lab) and looked in the mirror to see a ghostly face with bruises - those secondary colors again - purple, brown, a smudge of yellow.

Captain Hammer packed a punch.

He remembered the broken wrist, the twisted ankle, the dislocated shoulder. Oh yes, Barney remembered each and every injury. He'd also invented an array of rays - painkillers, tissue regeneration, bone mending. When he'd been knocked down by the bus, it was a simple matter of getting them all out of storage.

His rapid recovery was no miracle. Rather, it was the product of years of expectations, of abuse, of being defeated again and again.

The papers always said his gaze was deathly - that Dr Horrible had a terrifying stare. But they never saw his eyes. His eyes, two chips of ice, they were always hidden behind goggles with smoky lenses.

Since the day when Barney had finally removed the goggles for the last time, he'd had to find away to look once more into his own eyes for more than a minute without looking away.

With all the magic he knew how to do, it had still taken him six months to learn that trick.

*--*--*

Barney returned from the restroom to find Robin practically simpering and Moist giving her his most greasy of smiles. Moist leaned over and whispered something in her ear and was rewarded with a throaty chuckle.

"Hey!" Robin said, when Barney slid into the booth to join them. "Howard was just telling me about this party you guys once went to at the you-know-where!" She grinned and winked. Robin still treated the whole used-to-be-an-actual-super-villain thing as a big joke. "You guys sounded like you had some wild times!"

Barney wracked his brain to try and think about what Moist could have possibly have told her but his usually reliable intellect had gone for a cigarette break at that exact same second.

Meanwhile, Robin was ruffling Moist's hair. His stupid, pudding-basin hair. "You can totally tell that he's your friend, Barney." She laughed. "He's actually kind of sweet!"

"Sweet?" Barney replied, incredulously. "How is he _sweet_?" How could she not know what Moist was? An opportunistic creep of a bottom feeder - just like Barney used to be back in LA. Maybe that's all he was, even now.

But Robin liked that, he realised. Robin liked _him_. She liked over-the-top sleazy guys with a quick wit and a kind heart. She hung out with him all the time.

Moist turned to him and behind Robin's back he raised an eyebrow and mouthed "I am _so_ in!"

Barney shook his head. If Marshall were here right now... Hell, if any of the others were in right now... then they'd probably fall for Moist's charms too! But Marshall should have been there, that was the point. Suddenly Barney's cell started to ring. It was way too noisy in the bar to hear so, with an apologetic shrug he quickly left and headed up the steps and out into the street above the Bar.

However, he never got a chance to answer the call, because the moment he opened his mouth, a fist came out of nowhere and connected with his face, sending him back through the air and down onto the sidewalk.

Barney got one good look of his assailant before a boot connected with his head.

There was no yellow logo emblazoned on his overly-muscled chest. But the lantern jaw and sickeningly righteous grin was the same.

"Oh f-" Barney managed to say before he blacked out.


End file.
